Page 6 of Rebel Summer

“Yeah, you’re lucky I like Mariah or else you’d owe me one.”

Whenever my cousin, Mariah, would come to visit, Cat was usually with us too, the three of us inseparable during her stay.

I glanced at Mariah in her white dress and couldn’t help but laugh when she stopped mid-conversation with a plastic smile on her face to smash a mosquito on her neck. At least the insects didn’t play favorites.

I shifted my weight in my heels. “I need out of these shoes. Want to go walk the beach for a bit?”

“Yes, please,” Cat said.

We dropped our shoes by the staircase of the resort leading to a private beach access and began making our way down the torchlit walkway. I stifled a yawn that threatened to overtake my entire face. I hadn’t gone with so little sleep since…well, ever. My rabble-rousing college days were spent in the library. But I was determined to spend time with my old friend, and if I had to staple my eyes open to do it, so be it.

“How’s the B&B?” I asked. Cat’s uncle ran an adorable inn on the island, and Cat was his right hand. The resort was beautiful, but I definitely preferred the cozy feel of the Keene Bed and Breakfast.

She sighed. “It’s fine. It’s just hard to keep up with all this.” She motioned toward the glowing lights of the posh resort behind us. “But we’re doing okay, I think.”

We walked in a comfortable silence, the crash of the waves from the dark ocean the perfect white noise as we ambled away from the resort lights.

“How are things with the new wife?”

Angela. My dad’s wife of one year. A brunette beauty perfectly occupying the space my mom used to fill. My childhood had been complicated enough, dealing with my parents’ rocky relationship. I’d actually been grateful for the divorce and my mom moving to Atlanta. The new wife seemed a little quiet and unassuming, but I didn’t have anything against her.

“She seems nice,” I finally said. “I honestly just feel sorry that she’s hitched her wagon to my dad.”

“Are they still technically considered newlyweds?” Cat eyed me with a wicked smile.

I moaned. “I’d better not find out, but if I do, I’ll be moving to the couch in the basement.” My bedroom was much too close to my dad’s room for comfort.

“I wish we had an opening at the B&B for you. But we’re booked solid for weeks.”

I threw her a grateful look. “Thank you. But I need to put in some face time in order to go another two years without seeing him.”

“How’s your mom liking Atlanta?” she asked.

“Well, since she’s currently on a two-month European tour with a couple of recently divorced friends, I think she’s loving it.”

She smiled, smacking at a mosquito on her leg. “Any guys in Tennessee?”

“It’s so weird. I haven’t seen one guy there yet.”

She laughed and slung her arm through mine as we walked, our feet squishing through the wet sand. “Come on…fess up. Guys love a bookish math nerd.”

I barked out a short laugh. “Apparently, men don’t love it when you’re always researching and writing papers and never spending time with them.”

“That is weird. Maybe you should spend time researching guys instead of math theories.”

“Math is a much less complicated subject,” I said lightly.

There were guys in Tennessee. I had told myself that, after I graduated, things would be different. It didn’t take me long after graduation to realize that nothing was different. Postdocs, it turned out, were still endless amounts of research and time away from home. I was open to love but hesitant to offer myself to someone who might find me and my inability to commit lacking, like Stephen, who dumped me two months into our budding relationship last year because he was tired of me silencing his calls from the library.

I mean…I do get it, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it.

I took a long breath through my nose, feeling the relaxing pull of the beach. The salt in the air and the low hum of waves crashing next to us. I had a lifetime of memories on this beach. This island. It was heaven on earth, and a small part of me resented being so removed from this life. In Tennessee, I hardly had time to notice what was missing, but here... at this moment, the inviting pull of the water and my toes squishing the sand was hard to overlook.

I checked the time on my phone and stopped walking to rummage through my purse.

“What are you doing?” Cat asked.

“Tylenol,” came my one-word reply. I didn’t know why I bothered; the medicine hadn’t even touched the pain so far. Thirty hours without sleep had been the extra-strength Tylenol’s downfall.

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